Bringing The COVID-19 Vaccine To Boston’s Hardest-Hit Communities Is A Battle Against Hesitancy, Misinformation
Irlande Aime, 34, of Dorchester, gets a dose of Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a pop-up clinic in Dorchester, Sunday, August 1. (Tori Bedford/GBH News)
After a Sunday service at the Church of God Christian Life Center in Dorchester, parishioners trickled into a pop-up clinic in the back room, where a nurse from Boston Medical Center prepared a dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine for Irlande Aime, who fidgeted nervously in a folding chair. The 34-year-old Dorchester resident said the vaccine’s fast-tracked development had made her hesitant about getting the shot for over a year now — even as the virus tore through her community and she was treating COVID patients last year as a nurse at Carney Hospital.
“I wanted to wait because it was something that just happened so suddenly, it was too rapid, too fast,” Aime said. “Before there’s new medication, you must have research, and the research must be for a period of time.”
After the state’s mass-vaccination clinics shut down in May, health officials focused on targeting harder-to-reach populations, opening pop-up clinics in houses of worship, senior centers, YMCAs and other community organizations. As of last week, the DPH Mobile Vaccination Program has delivered more than 85,000 doses via 1,577 community-based and state-sponsored vaccination clinics across the state, including the Vax Express, Market Basket clinics, school-based clinics, community-based clinics with centers of worship, community-based organizations and cultural groups all hosting events, according to the Office of Health and Human Services.
A spokesperson for the city’s mobile vaccination effort told GBH News that the Boston Public Health Commission does not have public data on the number of people who have been vaccinated at clinics across the city.